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Science teaching: Make it more interesting!

by William Atkins

Thursday, 19 June 2008

Page 3 of 3

Students must learn from effective teachers. And, they are doing so in the majority of cases.

It is the minority of cases that concerns me. Even one incompetent teacher means that hundreds (maybe over one thousand) of children (over that teaching career) are not getting the education they deserve and need in this highly technical world.

This problem stated in the United Kingdom is not new. Students have been having problems learning math and science for generations.

We sometimes do nothing to solve the problem. The teacher is left in the same classroom year after year after year. That doesn't help--it only perpetuates the problem in not being able to effectively teach our children to become skilled and well-informed adults in their working careers.

Teachers should be graded—inspected—to learn which ones are teaching effectively and which ones aren’t. Ineffective teachers should be given the chance to acquire the information/education needed to teach effectively. If they cannot, then they need to be dismissed or transferred to subjects they can effectively teach.

Allowing incompetent teachers to remain in their positions, only adds generations and generations of ill-informed students to the science and mathematics areas.

There are many ways to find out which teachers are doing good jobs and which ones aren’t. For one, ask the students. They know!

However, allowing ineffectual teachers to remain in classrooms only adds to our woes in educating our children in the sciences and mathematics.

Children don’t have to say “Science is dull and boring” and “Math is too hard to learn.”

It isn’t dull, boring, and difficult to learn if it is taught by good teachers well equipped to effectively teach science and mathematics.

Too often, however, whether it is in the United Kingdom, the United States, or anyplace else in the world, we stand by and do nothing. We allow children to go through school without learning the subject, either because it is perceived that the students can't learn or because of ineffective teachers.

When we do it right, and provide students with good teachers, then they "can" learn. When we do it wrong, students are not given the chance to learn. It is only by diligence that we select the good teachers and re-education or dismiss the bad teachers.

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